


The Whole World Is Moving And I'm Standing Still

by dancinginthecenteroftheworld



Series: JB Appreciation Week 2019 [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Child Abuse, Dissociation, F/M, Healing, Incest, Non-Canonical Character Death, Past Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, Sexual Assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 12:02:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20891801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinginthecenteroftheworld/pseuds/dancinginthecenteroftheworld
Summary: When it's bad, Jaime goes away inside, to places that remind him of joy.For the JB Appreciation Week prompt "All Things Jaime"There IS a happy ending, but this story mainly focuses on Jaime and trauma, so it's pretty angsty and depressing. Include non-graphic references to child abuse, sexual assault and abusive relationships.The character death in warnings is NOT Jaime or Brienne.





	The Whole World Is Moving And I'm Standing Still

**Author's Note:**

> Mind the tags and warnings. This is a look at Jaime's trauma, and while we get some healing and promise for the future, it's not happiness and fluff as a story. 
> 
> Unbeta'd, because I like to live dangerously.

The first time Jaime goes away inside, he's ten. He has broken something, done something wrong – or maybe Tyrion did it and Jaime lied for him, he doesn't quite remember – and he is being beaten by his father. 

When he was ten, Jaime still loved his father, desperately tried to please him. He knew, he just knew, that if he could just do the right things, be better, be stronger, be smarter, his father might love him too.

But he's beaten, for a mistake, for a moment of clumsiness, and the blows keep raining down on his skin and his father snarls at him that he's not to cry, that only girls and weak children cry. 

Then suddenly, it's like he's watching it from a distance, a small boy whose skin grows redder and splits open under the force of a grown man's fist and Jaime doesn't want to see it, so he goes somewhere else. To the cliffs of Casterly Rock, where he could jump into the sea and feel more alive than he ever has. It's beautiful there, crisp open air and the sound of the waves that sounds like screaming.

Jaime forgets about it, after, because he tries to mention it to Cersei once and she curls her lip and tells him he's crazy, he's weak if he can't face up to their father. So he forgets about it, goes on to learning swordplay and war tactics at Crakehall.

He practices longer and harder, waking up in the middle of the night with a scream almost ripped from his chest and a dream he can't remember, and practicing footwork in his chamber.

Jaime is the best fighter anyone has ever seen and he's only four and ten, and nobody beats him anymore.

Jaime is so proud of his Kingsguard armor, gleaming with gold and ornament, the white cloak that marks him as a defender of the throne.

Then he stands outside the door and listens to Rhaella screaming, hears Aerys roaring his pleasure, and feels so sick he thinks he'll vomit all over his new boots.

The cliffs of Casterly are beautiful in summer, with clouds that float lazily across the sky and a horizon that seems endless.

Jaime goes away inside when he hears Aerys beating Viserys, the boy's screaming impossibly high-pitched and desperate.

When he hears Viserys beating Danaerys, learning from his father how women are to be made to bend to his will.

Jaime thinks of the cliffs, of the ocean.

He thinks of Cersei, the way she always smells of perfume and spring, of the softness of her body pressed against his, making him whole.

When Aerys starts torturing people for minor crimes, laughing while they burn, Jaime thinks of the feel of Cersei's hair brushing against his face. When Aerys burns Rickard Stark in his own armor, Jaime dreams of Cersei's hand caressing his face, when he staggers backwards later at the stench embedded in his white cloak Jaime remembers Cersei's lips against his skin.

Jaime isn't there when Aerys starts telling the pyromancer to burn the whole of King's Landing. He's not there when he kills the pyromancer, when he shoves his sword through Aerys' back, when Ned Stark comes in and finds him sitting on the throne surrounded by blood and death.

Jaime is on the cliffs of Casterly Rock, Cersei curled up next to him, the sea breeze in his hair and the smell of salt in his nose.

Jaime is on the cliffs of Casterly Rock, leaping into the ocean, when he hears Cersei screaming and sobbing while Robert roars another woman's name in their wedding bed.

It's where he is when Robb Stark throws him a stinking, dirty cell.

When he's tied to a tree with the biggest woman in Westeros leading him around on a leash.

When he's on a ship from Dorne with his daughter's body next to him, keeping vigil, Jaime is on the cliffs. He's sparring with the tallest woman he's ever seen, he has two hands, and he's winning.

Jaime is on an island he's only seen from afar, green and peaceful, when his youngest son relieves him of his white cloak. There is no shame of dishonor there, only peace and joy.

When Cersei tells Jaime that Tommen is gone, when she drags Jaime to her bed and showers him with sweet words and pulls him against her, Jaime is in a rowboat floating away from the Riverlands, heading north, sheltered by the strongest woman he's ever known.

Jaime doesn't want to be when Cersei tells him she's not sending soldiers to fight the dead, but he is, it's too quick and he can't go away before it's happening. Before his sister's words drip like poison from her lips and the last of what he's thought he knows about her crumbles into dust.

When he stands before the Dragon Queen awaiting judgement in an icy hall filled with men who want his head, Jaime is on Tarth, what he imagines of Tarth, looking into eyes bluer than the ocean, feeling the sun on his back and everything is quiet.

"Jaime," someone is saying.

"Jaime. JAIME."

Tarth collapses around him, green meadows and clear skies giving way to the gloomy, icy chill of Winterfell's hall.

The blue eyes are still there.

"Jaime," Brienne is saying, shaking him slightly. "Are you okay?"

The hall is empty now, Jaime notices, and somehow even colder for it. 

Brienne is _real_. 

"I'm fine," he manages. Brienne steps back, then, putting space between them.

"You were ..." Brienne trails off. She's as tall and solid as Jaime remembers from Riverun, swathed in fur and wool like a Northman.

"I'm fine," Jaime says again.

Brienne leads him to his chambers, such as they are, since he has apparently been granted leave to stay alive. 

The room is tiny, there's no hearth, a tiny slit of a window, and it's somehow even colder than the great hall.

Brienne's face tightens when she takes it in. 

"This isn't appropriate," she mutters.

"It's better than I deserve," Jaime tells her. 

Everything is a blur until the dead arrive. It's cold, it's dark, it's miserable. Jaime trains with men who hate him but can't kill him yet because the dead don't need more soldiers. He swallows meager rations of tasteless stew, he falls asleep in his tiny cot and wakes shivering and unable to feel his toes even under the furs.

Jaime can't remember the last time he was warm.

Then the dead come. The dead come and come and come, waves of endless terror. Jaime fights. He screams. He swings his sword at everything even after he's exhausted, after his arms ache.

He pulls wrights off Brienne and yanks her to her feet, pushing her back, not letting her fall. She does the same for him, the arcs of their swords becoming smaller and weaker.

Jaime doesn't want to die like this, but at least he's here, he knows, he's fighting and Brienne is at his side. 

The dead stop coming.

Jaime keeps swinging wildly for several seconds after they fall, but the dead stay down. What was soul-rending terror only moments before is nothing but a sad pile of bones and putrid flesh.

Brienne sags against him. Jaime doesn't think before pulling her into his arms, running his hands along her limbs, her body, checking for injuries.

Brienne gasps against his neck, and Jaime realizes this is inappropriate, she's a lady, she's a maid but he has to know she's okay.

Jaime almost goes away again later, when he sees his brother's body laid out on the stone floor, Arya Stark bent over it with a knife in her hand.

"This would be easier if it were you," Arya says, but Brienne pulls him away before he can see anything more.

It's weeks before the Raven comes, and Jaime knows what it says from the look on Brienne's face. 

Cersei is dead. Not before she surrenders the city though, and Jaime suddenly remembers that Arya had been in Braavos, the whispers Arya's learned the ways of the faceless men.

_It would be easier if this were you._

It would be easier on Cersei too, if it had been him, the last thing she would see, and then Jaime's back on the cliffs at Casterly Rock. There's a child in his arms, the palest blond curls he's ever seen, and the sun is warm.

"It's going to be okay, Jaime," Brienne's voice says.

When Jaime comes back, he's in a place he doesn't recognize. The bed is bigger than his, softer, more furs and it's almost enough that he feels warm. (That's a lie, that's a lie, Jaime hasn't felt warm in months) and there's a hearth with a fire blazing.

Brienne is in a chair next to him, her armor neatly stacked in one corner, her gaze unflinching.

"When we were ... when the Bloody Mummers were there," Brienne says. "You told me to go away inside. Is that where you were?"

Jaime nods.

"Where do you go?"

"Casterly Rock," he tells her. "The cliffs where I played as a child. In the sun."

She nods.

"Tarth," he says, after a moment. "I go to Tarth."

Brienne's face is unreadable.

"You've never been to Tarth," she says.

"I went past it once," Jaime tells her. "On the way to Dorne. It looked green. Is it green? I imagine it's green, green and blue."

"Why do you go to Tarth?"

"I used to go to Cersei," Jaime says. "To her – to us. But I stopped."

"Jaime ..."

"Then I went to a fight on a bridge. A rowboat in the Riverlands. To Tarth."

Brienne is crying, tears falling down her face.

"I can't imagine the waters there could be any bluer than your eyes," Jaime says.

Tarth is green, when the ship lands. Green in the sunlight, with the bluest waters Jaime's ever seen around it. 

Brienne kisses him so he knows it's real.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from The World Spins Madly on by The Weepies.


End file.
